


For My Sweetheart

by zetsubonna



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst and Porn, Bucky Barnes Feels, M/M, POV Bucky Barnes, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-12
Updated: 2014-08-12
Packaged: 2018-02-12 20:11:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2123178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zetsubonna/pseuds/zetsubonna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gender roles in homosexual society in the 1930s-40s were very strictly stuck to. Bucky, as the more masculine, the aggressor and the bigger earner, would be the "joe" in the relationship. Joes weren't even considered gay.</p><p>Steve, being smaller, being financially dependent, being the artist, being, for lack of a better word, pretty, would be the "punk," which had the same meaning then as it does now in regards to prison culture.</p><p>Bucky has feelings about this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For My Sweetheart

It’d be easy to take offense, and sometimes he does. Sometimes, he forgets for a minute, just for a minute, that there’s a whole big world out there that says Steve ain’t allowed to feel the things Bucky wants to know he feels, ain’t allowed to want the things Bucky wants to know he wants, ain’t allowed a lot of things. Not just because he’s not supposed to be queer, either, and queer, Bucky thinks, is probably the right word. Steve’s also sickly, poor, Irish, grew up with no man at home and the thing he’s best at in the world is quickly becoming undervalued and unappreciated, even with the WPA going strong.

Bucky ain’t perfect, he’s never been perfect, so sometimes he gets mad. He gets mad because he wants Steve to want, he wants Steve to believe he deserves, he wants Steve to be fierce in his passions, his devotions like he is in his righteous anger, because Steve ain’t perfect either, Bucky knows he ain’t, but Steve is  _good_ , Steve is a  _good person_ , and Steve should be loved and treated nice and kept safe and fed and warm and as healthy as his dinky little broke-down chest will let him be. Bucky can’t always keep Steve warm, or fed, or healthy, but he can love him so fucking hard his own heart breaks with it, and Steve half the time won’t  _let_  him, because Steve’s an  _idiot_  and thinks Bucky can do better and should, especially since Steve’s just a guy, just a fella and Bucky, if he didn’t insist on paying for Steve’s medicine and Steve’s extra food and Steve’s schooling, could probably afford to get married and have himself a little pack of bratty kids just as indestructible and full of laughs and sunshine as Bucky himself.

Bucky takes offense because, at least in part, he can’t picture himself enjoying any of that, even a little bit, if he had to get it all by walking away from Steve. It’s a fight they’re always having, without words, without actions, from the moment Bucky first plants that very first kiss on Steve’s lips in the kitchen of their tiny little apartment. From the second Steve’s clever, beautiful fingers curl into Bucky’s shirt, from the brush of Bucky’s mouth over Steve’s, from the brush of one tongue against the other, the hum of discontent in the distance becomes an increasingly loud pile of noise.

There are three words Bucky is not allowed to say. He can feel them all he wants, as long as he keeps them to himself. He knows Steve feels them, too, and won’t let himself say them because for Bucky, hearing and saying would amount to the same. As long as they don’t say those words, as long as Steve could be gone on the next stiff breeze, they can pretend this is just something little and soft and nice to come home to, not all encompassing and big as all outdoors.

So they snap at each other instead. Snap, bite, smack and shove, Bucky makes Steve stumble once and his heart quivers on the edge of horrified breaking until Steve gets his balance back and headbutts Bucky’s chest so hard he bruises. It’s while that bruise is still healing, still green and yellow and tender, that Bucky pins Steve to the door of the apartment, bracketing him between his hands and sealing off escapes with his feet planted apart.

"I want to," he says, low and firm, meeting Steve’s eyes before going up to kiss along the line of his floppy blond hair.

"You want to what?" Steve growls, because he doesn’t like being pinned in and Bucky knows it, it reminds him of hospitals and iron lungs and incubators and TB wards and-

"I want to," he says again, drawling it out, gentling it, his wrinkled brow, the bridge of his once-broken nose, a lip still split from a brawl outside a bar last weekend. "I think we oughtta."

"Oh, Christ," Steve complains, blushing up all Irish and pretty, and Bucky’d have him against the damn door if he weren’t a gentleman.

"You’re gonna let me anyway," Bucky needles him, plucking Steve’s curled fists from his sides and bringing them up to kiss his scraped knuckles and charcoal dust. "Why not now? Why not tonight, baby?"

"Christ," Steve swears again, his hands, as soon as Bucky lets them go, fisting in Bucky’s work shirt, which is half-untucked and half-unbuttoned and half-sweaty all at once. "You’re actually serious."

"I want to," Bucky says, hemming him in even closer now that he’s not fighting it. "I want to, I want to. You want me to, if you’re honest. Me before anybody, right? Why not tonight, baby boy? Let me."

"Christ," Steve cringes, folds in and down, glows so pretty, that blush goes all the way down, Bucky knows it does, knows it’s reaching for Steve’s nipples even now, soft and pink like sugar candy, and he wants them in his fingers and under his palms and in his  _teeth_  and- “Okay. Okay, fine, just- not until it’s dark and stop  _looking_  at me like that.”

"I’m gonna make it so good," Bucky promises, pinning Steve to the door with his hips and sucking his word into the side of Steve’s neck. "Gonna make you feel so good, Stevie, you’ll never-"

_you’ll never want anybody else_   
_you’ll always be mine_   
_you’ll never be able to take it back_   
_you’ll never want to_

"Yeah, yeah," Steve mutters, making a good show, even though it’s just them, of being appalled, of shoving Bucky back, of pulling himself free, of reclaiming his personal space. "Yeah, I’m sure. Stuff it. Christ."

He could take offense, and maybe he should, let on how much it hurts when Steve pretends he doesn’t want it, doesn’t crave it near as much as Bucky does, when he acts like he doesn’t fall apart when Bucky touches him, like his knees don’t threaten to give out when Bucky kisses him, like he doesn’t reach for it, pull it in, pull it close, savor it, like he’s put out after when Bucky wraps around him and holds him tight and never acts like he’s going to break. Steve has to act like this. He has to, he’s not allowed to like it as much as Bucky does.

It hurts, it stings, it’s acid and it’s bitter, but Bucky’s got it easy and he knows it. He can be mad sometimes, he ain’t perfect, but he gets over it and lets it go because he knows the rules, too, and really, Bucky’s not making any sacrifices here. It doesn’t cost him anything he wouldn’t already give Steve, hasn’t already been giving Steve forever anyway. And maybe he could, maybe he would, if he had to, if he really had to, but Steve won’t ask, Steve would never ask, and Bucky’s just-

He ain’t that  _nice_ , come down to it. Right deep down where he’d need to be, he ain’t that  _kind_  of a fella, and Steve is. Steve is sweet like sugar, melting and soft under Bucky’s hands, warm silk and pliant flesh, he gives and gives and Bucky takes and takes and wants and  _takes_  until Steve’s got nothing left and Bucky’s full and spent.

"Gonna let me do that again?" he purrs.

Steve groans. “Christ,” he slurrs, dizzy and sticky and hot. “Christ, yes. Okay.”

Bucky sucks the back of his neck. “Such a good boy, baby.”

Steve’s sweaty and wrecked and he weaves one of those cool, clever hands into Bucky’s hair, holding Bucky’s mouth to his skin. He’s not supposed to want this, he’s not allowed to want this, he can’t admit he wants this, but he does, he does, he  _does_ , and if he didn’t, Bucky isn’t sure what he’d do.

Go crazy, maybe.

"Am I?"

"So, so good," Bucky promises. "So good."

Steve squirms, shaking his head and then dropping his cheek on Bucky’s pillow. This might go on all night. Bucky wants to crawl into him again, again, again until his muscles give up and he can’t do a whole lot more than lay under him and whimper and  _leak_ , loved until he forgets he ain’t allowed to be, that he ain’t most times, that the world is bullshit and everything is bullshit and this is the only time anything is ever fair, and even now Bucky’s gotta be careful how he lays on him so he doesn’t squish him into an attack.

"You’re hot," Steve complains, and Bucky nips his ear and slides a hand underneath him. " _God._ Again?!”

"Until one of us passes out," Bucky informs him, and Steve laughs. It’s the first time he’s laughed all week. It’s  _Wednesday_. Bucky can do better by Steve. He will.


End file.
